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Wednesday, 1 February 2012

If You Want the Peace of the Dead, Prepare for Nuclear War

If You Want the Peace of the Dead, Prepare for Nuclear War

The world faces two existential threats: climate change, and nuclearArmageddon. Action on both is required urgently. Tackling the firstwill impose significant economic costs and lifestyle adjustments,while tackling the second will bring economic benefits without anylifestyle implications. Those who reject the first are derided asdenialists; those dismissive of the second are praised as realists.Although action is needed now in order to keep the world on this sideof the tipping point, a climate change-induced apocalypse will notoccur until decades into the future. A nuclear catastrophe coulddestroy us at any time, although, if our luck holds out, it could bedelayed for another six decades. The uncomfortable reality is thatnuclear peace has been upheld, owing as much to good luck as to soundstewardship. Because we have learned to live with nuclear weapons for66 years, we have become desensitized to the gravity and immediacy ofthe threat. The tyranny of complacency could yet exact a fearful price if wesleepwalk our way into a nuclear Armageddon. The time to lift thespectre of a mushroom cloud from the international body politic islong overdue.

Nuclear weapons are strategic equalizers for weaker sides in conflictrelationships, but they do not buy defence on the cheap. They can leadto the creation of a national security state with a premium ongovernmental secretiveness, reduced public account- ability, andincreased distance between citizens and Governments. There is theadded risk of proliferation to extremist elements through leakage,theft, state collapse, and state capture. In terms of opportunitycosts, heavy military expenditure amounts to stealing from the poor.Nuclear weapons do not help to combat today’s real threats ofinsurgency, terrorism, poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition andcorruption. As they said in the streets of Delhi in 1998: “No food, noclothing, no shelter? No worry, we have the bomb.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the risk of a Russia-United Statesnuclear war has diminished, but the prospect of nuclear weapons beingused by other nuclear-armed states or non- state actors has becomemore plausible. As a result, we find ourselves at a familiarcrossroads, confronting the same old choice between security in orfrom nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept the nuclearnightmare at bay for over four decades. The number of countries withnuclear weapons is still in single figures. There has been substantialprogress in reducing the number of nuclear warheads. However, thethreat is still acute with a combined stockpile of more than 20,000nuclear weapons; of these, 5,000 warheads are launch-ready and 2,000are in a state of high operational alert.

The NPT enshrined multiple bargains. The non-nuclear countries agreedamong themselves never to acquire nuclear weapons. They entered into adeal with the nuclear weapon states (NWS) whereby, in return forintrusive end-use control over nuclear and nuclear-related technologyand material, they were granted favoured access to nuclear technology,components, and material. The non-nuclear countries struck a seconddeal with the NWS by which, in return for forever forswearing thebomb, the NWS would pursue good faith negotiations for completenuclear disarmament. Article 6 of the NPT is the only explicitmultilateral disarmament commitment undertaken by all NWS.

Those agreements are now under strain due to a five-fold challenge:

1. The five NPT-licit nuclear powers (Britain, China, France,Russia and the United States) have disregarded NPT obligations todisarm.

The disquieting trend of a widening circle of NPT-licit and extra-NPTnuclear weapons powers has a self-generating effect in drawing othercountries into the game of nuclear brinkmanship. Adding to the fivesets of concerns is the sorry state of global governance mechanismsfor nuclear arms control. The Conference on Disarmament cannot evenagree on an agenda. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not yetentered into force and a fissile material cut-off treaty is no nearerconclusion.

After more than a decade in the doldrums, the nuclear agenda wasre-energized by a coalition of four United States national securitypolicy heavy weights—William Cohen, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, andWilliam Perry—and given fresh momentum with President Barack Obama’sPrague Promise in April 2009 to aim for the peace and security of aworld without nuclear weapons. The Washington Nuclear Summit lookedclosely at the safety and security requirements of nuclear programmesand materials. The 2010 NPT Review Conference was a modest success.Commissions such as the International Commission on NuclearNon-Proliferation and Disarmament and campaigns like Global Zero havehelped to mobilize key constituencies. Russia and the United Stateshave negotiated, signed, ratified, and brought into force a newStrategic Arms Reduction Treaty (know as START II) to cut back nucleararsenals by one third, limiting each to 1,550 deployable warheads.

Yet, there is a palpable and growing sense that START II could markthe end of nuclear disarmament progress, instead of being the firststep on the road to abolition. There is little evidence of significantdemand for disarmament by domestic political constituencies in thenuclear-armed states. Tellingly, not one country that had an atomicbomb in 1968 when the NPT was signed has given it up. Judging by theiractions rather than the rhetoric, all are determined to remainnuclear-armed. They are either modernizing nuclear forces and refiningnuclear doctrines, or preparing to do so. For example, even afterimplementing START II, the United States will retain a cache ofreserve warheads as a strategic hedge available for rapid uploading,should the need arise, and also build three new factories forincreased nuclear warhead production capacity. To would-beproliferators, the lesson is clear: nuclear weapons are indispensablein today’s world and for dealing with tomorrow’s threats.

Reflecting the technical state of 1968 when the NPT was signed, Iraninsists on its right to pursue the use of nuclear energy for peacefulpurposes—to the point where it would be a screwdriver away fromdeveloping the bomb. The world is at a loss on how to stop Iran fromcrossing the weapons threshold and how to persuade, coax, or coercethe DPRK from stepping back into the NPT as a denuclearized member ingood standing.

Japan is the emotional touchstone in the discourse as the world’s onlyvictim of the bomb. The United States has a special responsibility tolead the way to nuclear abolition as the only country to have usedatomic bombs, and as the world’s biggest military power. The A-bombwas developed during the Second World War by a group of scientistsbrought together for the Manhattan Project under the directorship ofJ. Robert Oppenheimer. Witnessing the first successful atomic test on16 July 1945, Oppenheimer recalled the sacred Hindu text, the BhagavadGita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once intothe sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.” Birth anddeath are symbiotically linked in the cycle of life. Oppenheimer alsorecalled the matching verse from the Gita: “Now I am become Death, theshatterer of worlds.”

The same duality is omnipresent in every aspect of modern dayHiroshima. The citizens of Hiroshima, in rebuilding their city, haveconsecrated it as a testimonial to social resilience, humansolidarity, and nuclear abolition. Once again a beautiful, scenic, andthriving city, Hiroshima lives by three codes: transformation from amilitary city to a city of peace; to forgive and atone, but never toforget; and, never again.

The case for abolition is simple, elegant, and eloquent. Withoutstrengthening national security, nuclear weapons diminish our commonhumanity and impoverish our soul. Their very destructiveness robs themof military utility against other nuclear powers and of politicalutility against non-nuclear countries. As long as any country has any,others will want some. As long as they exist, they will be used oneday again by design, accident, or miscalculation. Our goal, there-fore, should be to make the transition from a world in which the roleof nuclear weapons is seen as central to maintaining security, to onewhere they become progressively marginal and eventually entirelyunnecessary. Like chemical and bio- logical weapons of massdestruction, nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented, but like them,nuclear weapons can also be controlled, regulated, restricted andoutlawed under an inter- national regime that ensures strictcompliance through effective and credible inspection, verification, and enforcement.

The common task is to delegitimize the possession, deployment, and useof nuclear weapons; to require no first use and sole purposecommitments; to reduce their numbers to 10 per cent of presentstockpiles (500 warheads each for Russia and the United States, and1,000 among the rest) by 2025; to reduce the high-risk reliance onthem by introducing further degrees of separation between possession,deployment and use, by physically separating warheads from deliverysystems and lengthening the decision-making fuse for the launch ofnuclear weapons; to strengthen the authority and capacity of theInternational Atomic Energy Agency; to establish a multilateral fuelcycle; and to toughen up supply- side restrictions.

Because the NPT has been subverted from a prohibition into a purelynon-proliferation regime, the time has come to look beyond it to abetter alternative that gathers all the meritorious elements into oneworkable package in a nuclear weapons convention. This will notself-materialize merely because we wish it so. Nor will it evereventuate if we always push it into the distant future. There are manytechnical, legal, and political challenges to overcome, but seriouspreparatory work needs to be started now, with conviction andcommitment.

Those who worship most devoutly at the altar of nuclear weapons issuethe fiercest fat- was against others rushing to join them. The mostpowerful stimulus to nuclear proliferation by others is the continuingpossession of the bomb by some. Nuclear weapons could not proliferateif they did not exist, but because they do, they will. The threat touse nuclear weapons, both to deter their use by others and to preventproliferation, legitimizes their possession, deployment, and use. Thatwhich is legitimate cannot be stopped from proliferating.

Critics of the zero option want to keep their atomic bombs, but denythem to others. They lack the intellectual honesty and the courage toshow how non- proliferation can be enforced without disarmament, toacknowledge that the price of keeping nuclear arsenals is uncontrolledproliferation, and to argue why a world of uncontrolled proliferationis better than abolition for national and international security.

The focus on non-proliferation to the neglect of disarmament ensuresthat we get neither. The best and only guarantee of non-proliferationis disarmament. If we want non- proliferation, therefore, we mustprepare for disarmament. Within our lifetime, we will either achievenuclear abolition or have to live with nuclear proliferation and diewith the use of nuclear weapons. It is better to have the soft glow ofsatisfaction from the noble goal of achieving the banishment ofnuclear weapons, than the harsh glare on the morning after theseweapons have been used.

About the authorRamesh Thakur is Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-proliferationand Disarmament, and Professor of International Relations, at theAustralian National University. He previously was the Senior ViceRector of the United Nations University at the rank of AssistantSecretary-General. His next major project isThe Oxford Handbook ofModern Diplomacy.